Saturday, May 12, 2007

Blogging Scared

"Famous" blogger Perez Hilton has been slapped with a 7.5 million dollar law suit that claims he's been using pictures without paying for them, costing a certain Hollywood photo agency millions of dollars in lost advertising. Or something like that. Law is a mystery to me.
But what's not a mystery to me is - I've been using pictures that I procured from various Internet resources for the almost two years I've been writing this blog. Now, I don't think anybody's going to come after me - much as I'd like to think so, my blog doesn't have a worldwide, millions-a-day readership. Perhaps more importantly, I don't have any ad space on my blog, and Perez was charging $9000-$16000 to place an ad on his blog (hence the photo agency's lost advertising dollars). Nonetheless, I'm a little concerned about procuring pictures from the Internet. When I started this blog, I asked my mentor Chargenda where he got his pictures. I love him, so I won't tell you exactly what he said, but I'll say that he encouraged me to use Google. And so I do. Almost every time I write, unless I use a picture that I took with my own camera.
What's the point in telling you this? I might start carrying my camera with me, so if I want to write a post about, say, a certain book, I'll have to take a picture of the book cover - but won't that be even shadier than procuring a picture from the Internet? I guess the other thing that could happen is I could ask all my readers to contribute to my legal defense fund. I don't have seven hundred dollars, much less seven million.

pictures from the Internet - A-
getting sued for using pictures from the Internet - D-
my chances of getting sued for using pictures from the Internet - 7,500,000:1

4 comments:

equippedtofascinate said...

If it makes you feel any better, they can come after me too. Also, I knew you couldn't boycot AI for long.

queenb2u said...

Well, put me on the list of offenders, because I get my pictures from Google too. I don't have access to a digital camera (one guess who has it.) So, is there a legal expert out there who could answer this question? I know one thing, Google has pictures that are much more expressive than mine. How would I ever have found a movie star wearing an Escher dress?

Beth said...

Is it still illegal if you cite where you got it from?? hmm . . .

Frannie Farmer said...

Yep, me too ... guilty!
What is a girl to do?